The 2023 Global Slavery Index estimates that on any given day in 2021, there were 41,000 individuals living in modern slavery in Australia. This equates to a prevalence of 1.6 people in modern slavery for every thousand people in the country.
According to the latest Global Estimates of Modern Slavery (2022) from Walk Free, the International Labour Organization and the International Organization for Migration: 49.6 million people live in modern slavery – in forced labour and forced marriage. Roughly a quarter of all victims of modern slavery are children.
In the 2021-22 financial year, the AFP received 294 reports of modern slavery and human trafficking, an increase from 224 in the previous financial year.
Fifty million people are trapped in modern slavery – 10 million more than in 2018 – amid a surge in worldwide exploitation, new estimates show. The number of people in exploitative labour, including sex trafficking and domestic servitude, rose to 28 million in 2021, with a further 22 million in forced marriage.
Using this technique, it is estimated that the number of human trafficking and slavery victims in Australia in 2015–16 and 2016–17 was between 1,300 and 1,900. This means there are approximately four undetected victims for every victim detected.
Trafficking is used for a wide variety of purposes, such as domestic, agricultural or sweatshop labour, marriage and prostitution. Australia is a destination country for victims of trafficking, and evidence suggests the majority are women trafficked into debt-bonded prostitution.
Nations with the highest number of people living in modern slavery included India, China, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Turkey, Bangladesh, and the United States. Six of those countries are in the G20.
There are more slaves today than EVER before in the history of the world. data model.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Walk Free Foundation, in partnership with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), released Global Estimates of Modern Slavery in September 2022. This report estimates that, at any given time in 2021, approximately 27.6 million people were in forced labor.
Direct serious and organised crimes were estimated to cost up to $37.3b in 2020–21. These are crimes that have a clear and direct link with serious and organised crime (eg illicit drug trafficking, human trafficking and organised financial crime).
Internationally. Australia has ratified the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC) and its supplementary Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Trafficking Protocol).
1 in 4 of all victims of trafficking are children involved in forced labor. As many as 1.2 million children are being trafficked every year. The children who are trafficked often work as slaves on farms, mines and at industrial factories.
Forced marriage appears the most prevalent form of modern slavery in Australia. It involves being tricked, forced or coerced into a marriage without full consent.
Slavery occurs in every state of Australia, in rural and urban areas.
Historically, there are many different types of slavery including chattel, bonded, forced labour and sexual slavery.
The countries with the highest prevalence of modern slavery at the end of 2021 were North Korea, Eritrea, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, it said.
Slavery was abolished as a legally recognized institution, including in a 1909 law fully enacted in 1910, although the practice continued until at least 1949. Illegal acts of forced labor and sexual slavery in China continue to occur in the 21st century, but those found guilty of such crimes are punished harshly.
The worst offenders
But according to the index, when countries are evaluated on numbers alone, the world's biggest democracy, India, has the most people trapped in modern slavery, followed by China, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Turkey, Bangladesh and the United States.
While boys and men are victims as well, most individuals identified as trafficked for both labor and commercial sex are women and girls. For every 10 victims detected globally, five are adult women and two are girls, according to a report released in 2021 by the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (PDF, 18MB).